Grove Centre mental health closure ‘ghastly’ says Bill Oddie

Published: September 1, 2011
by SIMON WROE

WILDLIFE TV presenter Bill Oddie has voiced concerns over the “extraordinary” closure of a Hampstead mental health clinic.

Mr Oddie, a Belsize Park resident who has battled depression for more than a decade, branded the decision to shut the 44-bed Grove Centre on Rowland Hill behind the Royal Free Hospital as “pretty ghastly” in a radio interview last weekend.

He told the New Journal yesterday (Wednesday): “I don’t think any closure is a good thing unless a place is in a terrible state. As I gathered, only a few years ago people were saying it [the Grove Centre] was a fantastic facility. It seems fairly extraordinary that somewhere is lauded as a step forward and then relatively soon afterwards it’s a large step backward.”

The Camden and Islington Foundation Trust (CANDI) closed the Grove Centre on July 28 saying that beds were lying empty as staff moved away from an institutional approach to treatment.

St Mary’s House, another building adjoined to the Royal Free that specialised in dementia, is due to be closed within a few months.

Mr Oddie said: “I am basically suspicious of the justification, in this day and age, of ‘we’re cutting it down because we don't need it’.

“It’s like telling you that you’re going to cut the budget on a TV show because people don’t like all these good scripts. No, no. Excuses, excuses.”

Mr Oddie said although he had never been to the Grove Centre, private beds for people with mental illness were “desirable”.

He also spoke of his own positive experiences at the Swiss Cottage Crisis Centre in 2009.

But he stressed that ward stays could be “frightening” and “unsuitable” places for some patients to receive treatment.

The decision to close both hospital units was made following a public consultation – even though consultation responses published on the Trust’s website showed overwhelming support for not cutting the number of beds available.

A Trust spokesman said: “Ongoing investment in community-based services such as crisis beds has meant fewer people are being admitted as inpatients, and their stays are shorter.

“This has meant we were operating with up to 88 bed vacancies, so in January this year we consulted over where we should reduce our capacity.

“The overwhelming feedback was that the care provided at all four sites was excellent, with the Grove Centre being the least favoured site for service users...

“This still leaves us with bed vacancies for local people at other C&I sites, and we will always provide a bed to every person with a clinical need for one.”